Thursday, August 6, 2015

Star Wars Birthday Party

*This post was originally published on 11/14/12. Enjoy!

This past October, my little guy turned 7 years old. Seven! Seven years old! I can't believe it. I blinked and he grew up. This year, he's become obsessed with star wars, which absolutely fascinates me since he's never seen the movie. But in his mind, Star Wars is this amazing world of villians, good vs evil, and light sabers. So I caved and started planning a Lego Star War's party which actually turned out to be a lot of fun.

Princess Leia made an appearance at the party as well. She even had her own light saber to defend herself against her brother. I saw a lot of different light saber ideas on Pinterest, but in the end went with pool noodles since I knew the boys would be beating each other with them anyways. We cut the noodles in half, then wrapped the cut end in SHINY (not matte) silver duct tape. Then I added a strip of black electrical tape on the top and the bottom of the silver. Both tapes were very forgiving and easily movable if necessary.

I love planning food for these parties. What does that say about my appetite? Popcorn, veggies and dip, and pretzel rods dipped in chocolate for light sabers.

I didn't get a picture of the punch, but we made Yoda Soda: 7-Up mixed with limeade and scoops of lime sherbert floating in it. The kids thought the green color was weird, but once they tasted it, they were hooked.

And my mom came up with this one: Death Star Donuts. Chocolate donut holes purchased from the store and sprinkled with edible silver stars. Yummy!

My mom made the cake. She frosted a sheet cake and sprayed it with silver coloring from Wiltons. Then for the lego pieces, she added smaller cakes, made the nobs with marshmallows, and frosted the whole piece. We stacked them on the back of the cake and added Lego Star Wars figures as well.

To start off the party, we had an obstacle course with several items from around our house: a crawling tunnel, cones to kick a soccer ball around, a black tablecloth to run through, and bobbing for an apple at the end before tagging the next team mate. All through out the course, we had "Jedis" trying to stop the kids by whacking them with light sabers. I'm not sure who it was more fun for: the kids or the adults.

I looked up several pictures of Yoda a few days before and drew on to play Pin the Light Saber. My kids love every variation of this game and usually end up going several times.

My mother-in-law printed out several pictures of Stormtroppers and we took out Noah's nerf gun. The idea was to hit as many as they could. You could make the Stormtroppers stand or do what we did: tape them to a black tablecloth hanging from the clothesline. Either way, my little girl was going to make sure she got a good shot.

Finally it was time for cake!

And a group photo before opening presents!

It seems like all our parties lately have ended with a pinata. And this party was no exception. Although the homemade pinata turned out to be a little bit sturdier than planned and we broke the plastic bat. Plan B involved a metal bat and some very concerned parents. Don't worry. No one was hurt in the destruction of the Death Star pinata. Oh, yeah, except for the pinata.

In the end we had a ceremony where we presented each of the kids with their certificate of Jedi training, making them official Jedi's. Now, they're off to defend the galaxy. They're well prepared, energetic, and full of sugar. At least until next year!